NOVEMBER 15
H ow to provide energy in an affordable, equitable and sustainable way was central to this panel, which featured Mohamed Abdel Gawad Allam, head of Multilateral Cooperation with the UN and IFIs at Egypt’s Ministry of International Cooperation, who presented the host country’s program entitled, Nexus of Water, Food and Energy (NWFE). The NWFE program was announced in July 2022 to attract foreign funds to implement green projects in the water, food and energy sectors. The US$10 billion program, which will be funded through grants, soft financing and private sector investments, includes replacing 17 natural gas-based power stations with up to 10 gigawatts of renewable energy from wind and solar. Mr. Allam said: “We don’t need more pledges; we just need to work on the points already in the plan.” Husain Mugaibel, Islamic Development Bank Global Lead Energy Specialist, said the huge scale of energy investments required to cope with accelerating demand and major investments means that addressing them will only be possible with private sector involvement. For that, governments must lead the way on de-risking. That view was shared by OPEC Fund Private Sector Business Development Director Khalid Khadduri: “Egypt has shown how through multi-stakeholder engagement the potential for renewable energy becomes a reality.” He noted that the Egyptian government had pursued
Cooperating for Egypt’s energy upgrade
Mohamed Abdel Gawad Allam, Ministry of International Cooperation, Egypt
energy diversification and liberalization, facilitating a market for private renewable energy development. The OPEC Fund was also represented on the panel by Mr. Alomar, who said, “Working with other members of the Arab Coordination Group more than 40 percent of OPEC Fund support to Egypt has gone to the energy sector and increasingly towards energy transition.” The added value of the ACG, for Mohammed Sadeqi, engineering advisor at the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, is that the group enables the collective financing of very large projects, which would otherwise be impossible to achieve alone. Mr. Sadeqi said that ACG members “agree that the best way to deal with climate change is to collaborate on securing a clean environment for new generations.”
Khalid Khadduri, OPEC Fund, Private Sector Business Development Director
Mohammed Sadeqi, Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development
Husain Mugaibel, Islamic Development Bank, Global Lead Energy Specialist
Musab Alomar, OPEC Fund, Director, MENA, Eastern Europe & Central Asia
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